Testimonials: The Impact of Using RO Methods in a Small Entrepreneurial Organization

Speaker A Let's move on now and listen to two testimonials which we can thank businessman Dario Patina for more. He founded a company originally intended to provide software services, which we have been working with for over ten years. Both Dario and his partner who joined the company later, can testify to the kind of work that can be carried out with this kind of organization. Well, when Soft Office's first jobs appeared, the way I organized myself was using checklists for customer orders, for example. This had an impact on the admin area and the work being followed up in the commercial sector. And as a result I quickly implemented work checklists in each area. I am by nature a person who uses checklists in my everyday life. One might say I was. I mean, I am a little obsessive and back then I had to do a little bit of everything. Obviously, at that moment I also had to do some of the technical work, which is what clients asked for. And as the volume of work grew, the forms and checklists were replaced by a small system that I myself developed. When the amount of work increases, one obviously starts to look for help without really knowing that people have different profiles and skills beyond whatever experience each person might have. And one of the people who I took on, who I came across on the way, ended up being my current partner. He was 22. So there were a lot of points in common, although at that moment I was the one who had the entrepreneurial spirit. I think this was a key factor for a Soft Office, because my partner's potential and skills at that moment resulted in his becoming a partner. Because at that moment one doesn't really know how to choose a manager or how to organize the work for one's responsibilities. So I think that at the beginning this happens by itself. Something which helped me a lot in organizing the work was being able to see myself within the organization chart at the different levels of the company's executive organization or in my various roles as a businessman or as a shareholder and even on the board. But thanks to the organization chart, and particularly within the executive organization, I was able to separate my CEO work from my work as client services manager. This company has five different sectors, each with its own manager and I am one of them. The possibility of seeing oneself wearing one's different hats in the organization chart is very relaxing and generates in one's internal world, different timings for work and for operating. There is something important about this when one is finally able to conceptualize the different levels at which one acts. And it has happened externally in relation to clients, even with partners, that they get enthusiastic about the fact that one has the power to take fast decisions precisely because one operates at different levels. And this very often is counterproductive because as I said previously, at different levels one lets things mature at different speeds and one has partners and besides consultants. So let me exemplify by mentioning a case in which I was asked to take a very quick decision and I said that as a general manager and as a member of the organization I have a lot of power but it is not absolute. There is a board of directors above.

Speaker B Me.

Speaker A In this role of general manager, founder, member of the board. One feels that one is rather alone, among other things. At first I said I didn't want to have any bosses. Well, this allows one a great deal of freedom, but at the same time, at some moments one has to take decisions alone. And now for more than ten years a consultant called Atelio Pena has been working with me. Together we've undertaken this task of understanding what a company is, what organization is. He's helped me a lot in all these things that I've been talking about, what it means to discriminate among the different levels, understand the company as a community in which one shares the territory not only with one's partners and employees, but with the clients and suppliers as well. It's a network of relationships and links and every day one has to be able to stand back and see how this greater organization, the community, is evolving. Something that we have worked on with Atidio, whom I meet three times a week, sometimes following a fixed agenda and others working more freely just to know where my soul is. What we did with him was to work on a very important concept that is keeping written records of everything that can be noted down, because this allows one to work with great clarity, especially with respect to my own mental processes and to the ideas I wish to implement and how I transmit them to the rest of the organization.

Speaker B Well, from my point of view, when an organization faces the objective of introducing a new managing intermediate layer additionally to the obvious challenge of looking for people capable or right to get these responsibilities, they come a new set. Of challenges, mostly in a personal order, such as being confident with the idea of somebody else doing or performing the tasks you've been performing up to that day, personally and with full confidence on your capability. Normally this is a hard idea to take in the first time. Also the acceptance of different ways to perform the things you did and keep that confidence on the capability of get the goals. And finally you have to find out a way of help with your experience. To a person that is improving and learning how to work, he's developing his own capabilities and you're trying to put your own experience in the right moment. So I think that these challenges maybe are a harder challenge for getting that objective than just looking for the right. When a person puts its working time or its working time in different roles. In relation with organizations such as a stockholder, a director and also an employee, even an executive employee or whoever in the line, you have to choose the right moment to perform each role clearly. That employee role, executive role is everyday role. You don't have to think or choose much when to do, when to play that role. In the other end, the stockholder role is the most difficult role to place. Normally you don't get concerned about this role in the working environment. Normally you do totally outside the office with your partners, during weekends, at most during a lunch shirt together and in the middle of that being a director and helps with decisions on where to take the organization to. You have to choose the specific moments with some regularity but not very often. And normally you also try to do this in special environment with some distance to the direct execution of tasks.